Monthly Archives: January 2014

Thomas Piketty’s new book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” described by one French newspaper as a “a political and theoretical bulldozer,” defies left and right orthodoxy by arguing that worsening inequality is an inevitable outcome of free market capitalism.Piketty, a … Continue reading →

These boundaries that we establish between little pockets of knowledge in the academy are a fiction. Transdisciplinarity, to my mind, is about challenging the fiction of disciplines, about recognizing that knowledge isn’t something that can be carved up into neatly … Continue reading →

When Professor Cathy Davidson of Duke University agreed to teach a Coursera course on the “History and Future of (Mostly) Higher Education,” which will launch on January 27, 2014, she was determined to see how the course itself could help … Continue reading →

A longstanding geological fight over the age of one of the most iconic landscapes in the United States — Arizona\’s Grand Canyon — may finally be over. The massive chasm does not date back 70 million years, as earlier work … Continue reading →

A winter that lasts years isn\’t just a problem in Game of Thrones. Roughly 1500 years ago, our world was turned upsidown by a winter that witnesses say \”never ended.\” Now there is scientific evidence that there really was a … Continue reading →

At different stages in our lives, we require more and less of certain hygienic products: First diapers, then mostly toilet paper and menstrual maintenance items, and as bowels become more difficult to control, a different kind of diaper. It stands … Continue reading →

At Google they call it the toothbrush test. Shortly after returning to being the firm’s chief executive in 2011, Larry Page said he wanted it to develop more services that everyone would use at least twice a day, like a … Continue reading →

A chief complaint about wind energy is that nobody wants to look at the turbines. A lab out of University of Texas – Arlington is revolutionizing the concept by creating windmills so tiny, ten can fit on a single grain … Continue reading →

What if I told you that insects in the environment may be able to tell us about the world they live in? Imagine it; they could reveal changes in climate, the presence of dangerous gases or even the arrival of … Continue reading →

…regardless of our resolutions and regardless of our ability to achieve those resolutions, our lives on this lonely cosmic outpost, this \”Pale Blue Dot,\” continue on. Until, of course, they don\’t. And that, in itself, is something to consider as … Continue reading →